Wanderings from Wuhan (Otherland, No. 11, 2006) (Part III)

Wanderings from Wuhan, Otherland (No. 11, 2006) (Part III)
[online version published from 29/03/2006]

(One email response yesterday, 20/4/06, Thursday, from Mr B in Japan, says: I enjoyed much of the writing on the website from your students. The English level is very high and the quality of the poems surprisingly so as well. They look to be a good mob.)

(One email response today, 13/4/06 Thursday, from Mr Yin in Wuhan says: I am very delighted to hear from you and read the latest "Otherland." I like the name "Wanderings in Wuhan" very much!  It is really a great surprise for me! Reading the articles and other works written by the first-year-graduates reminds me of the time you spent in Wuhan University, which I will treasure in my memory.)

           A Sweet Rendez-vous 1
                                                                           by  Liang Yujing

Dusty are those streets when the sun is

Hanging upon us with his drowsy face

Like the pale fevered brow of a middle-aged gentleman.

Those ships on the Yangtze River

Feebly crawl across the surface of the contaminated liquid;

Sunlight slouches, with its drooping head,

Along every smooth tile on the building walls,

As if it meditating, or just slumbering

Within the fragrance of modern stench;

For a thousand times there comes a question:

Is there possibility to send a pastoral song

To those sensual ears? Or to have an exciting quaff

In the Yuppies�� parties?

Come live with me and be my love

And we will all the pleasures prove. 2

We sit in The McDonald��s, she and I,

With a pile of fast food on the table.

She is b-e-a-utiful as a red, red rose; 3

Her curled locks are manmade and cost 400 RMB,

Her fingernails neatly trimmed, her teeth whitewashed.

But I love her

I love her pretty and expressive and lustful eyes.

Once and once again I want to ask her,

But for many a time I retreat.

I want to ask her attractive eyes:

��Do you like the eyes of Mona Lisa?�� 4

But I dare not.

A man in dark outside the window walks to and fro

In search of Leonardo Da Vinci. 5

Meeting at day is sweet, of course, and

A voice less loud, thro�� its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts quarrelling each to each. 6

My mind is rotten in the pop music;

My soul is drowning in the coke.

A pair of bloated chicken wings

Lying uncomfortably in the paper box

Her gestures are genteel and fashionable

Her words are modest and well-bred

Her arms are slim and quite like a lady��s

Her smile outmatches the most beautiful artificial flower.

And when sunlight creeps in, yawning on the windowpanes

I want to produce some voices but soon hesitate

Because I dare not.

Is it suitable that

I sit loosely chewing the ice blocks?

(But they said it��s very rude.)

That would be noisy and vulgar,

For of good quality are both those blocks and my teeth.

��You little punk,�� smiles she, ��eat it.��

And fills up my mouth with a yellow-crusted chicken leg.

So that I cannot (I am sure she is intentional)

Put forth my inquiry:

��Do you like the eyes of Mona Lisa?��

Of course I dare not either.

A man in dark outside the window walks to and fro

In search of Leonardo Da Vinci.

How can I equip my body with screws and rivets

Just for a jingling automatic walk?

How can I dry out the water of life in my mind

And make my skull a paper container of coke?

How can I straighten my curving spine

To pretend to be a gentleman rich in hope? 7

In a minute I feel like casting off all my fashionable intelligence

To have an odyssey with you

Far from the madding crowd. 8

But how can I presume

She loves the eyes of Mona Lisa?

I am chewing the ice blocks greedily

When the sun has caught a disease and lost his hair.

His long golden hair scatters on the filthy ground,

Surrounded by butt-ends and such civilized dumps.

I carefully pick up those long golden locks,

And bury them together with my last libido. 9

There is a vibration between memory and desire,

Or a fissure that would bite my soul.

I gaze and gaze at her alluring glittering eyes,

��Do you really like the eyes of Mona Lisa?��

A question leaping from the present

To somewhere afar, or it is just nonsense.

But I dare not.

A man in dark outside the window walks to and fro

In search of Leonardo Da Vinci in vain.

I don��t know who he is or where he is from

His face is wearied, his eyes depressed and

The silent guitar in his hands gently weeps. 10

He lingers around the corner for a while

And plods away in the dust.

Is it suitable that

A shepherd sings his pastoral song to the nymphs in the streets?

Numbness permeates my limbs

And exhausted is my mind;

I am an empty bottle filled with carbon dioxide.

We sit in The McDonald��s, she and I,

A pair of loose pincers that no longer fold.

My cellphone is ringing with

A passionate prelude of Carmen 11

(The only thing alive in this lifeless moment.)

And the summoning from my superior.

I have to go, I have to go

To part from my honey and return to the annoying mess of my business;

Which etherizes my passion and true love.

How can I stay with you, in a kingdom by the sea, 12

To cast off all these suppressing philistine tangles?

I have to go but I don��t want to; my cellphone is ringing

But nay, let me stay with you for a while more

Just one minute more.

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle. 13

��You must go,�� her eyes are firm and resolute,

��I also want to stay with you but your BUSINESS is more important.��

How modest and rational she is! And her expression, how handsome!

But no, I do not want to go

I have waded through thousands of miles just to be with you

How can my BUSINESS spoil our rendezvous?

One minute more, only one minute more,

Let me gaze at your beautiful eyes and

There must be a time to ask without hesitation:

��Do you really like the eyes of Mona Lisa?��

Though Leonardo Da Vinci is dead.

There used to be a man in dark outside the window walking to and fro

In search of Leonardo Da Vinci in vain.

��Childish!�� my rational girlfriend replies scornfully,

��You ought to be rational and you know it.��

I am scared of her beautiful eyes.

Unwillingly, I stand up like a jolter-headed robot

Involved again into the monstrous mechanism of daily life.

We loiter along a narrow and endless street

Like two curves that run almost parallel to each other.

At the bus-stop she gave me a senseless kiss

And a dismissive push.

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o�� life shall run. 14

I lean forward my ear to hearken to the voice of dusk:

The murmuring of vehicles pervading my vacant mind.

I am tired�� I am tired��

I strive to straighten my curved spine to show

That I have an upright backbone.

My cellphone rings once more

To urge me to speed up��

I wonder if there is a fulcrum in the universe

To support my weight and keep my head and feet in balance.

I am tired��I am tired��I can no longer sing out any pastoral

I carefully wind the clock of my brain to keep it accurate.

For my business. I am a businessman and at the same time

I love Leonardo Da Vinci.

But he is dead, dead as God. 15

NOTES:

[1] Dating in French, which is usually supposed to be a sweet moment.

[2] Christopher Marlowe, ��The Passionate Shepherd to His Love��, lines 1-2.

[3] Robert Burns, ��A Red, Red Rose��, lines 1-2.

   O, my luve is like a red, red rose,

That��s newly sprung in June.

[4] The famous portrait painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, the leading artist of Renaissance in Italy.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Robert Browning, ��Meeting at Night��, lines 11-12.

   And a voice less loud, thro�� its joys and fears,

   Than the two hearts beating each to each.

[7] William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29, lines 5-6.

   Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

   Featured like him, like him with friends possessed.

[8] Thomas Gray, ��Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard��, lines 73-74.

   Far from the madding crowd��s ignoble strife,

   Their sober wishes never learned to stray.

[9] A psychological item created by Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychologist.

[10] These lines are derived from ��While My Guitar gently weeps��, a rock song composed by the Beatles.

[11] An opera composed by Georges Bizet.

[12] Edgar Allan Poe, ��Annabel Lee��, line 1-2.

    It was many and many a year ago,

    In a kingdom by the sea.

[13] Christopher Marlowe, ��The Passionate Shepherd to His Love��, stanza 3.

[14] Robert Burns, ��A Red, Red Rose��, lines 11-12.

[15] I cannot remember clearly the source of these words. Maybe Nietzsche used to claim in Thus Spake Zarathustra that God has been dead.

[uploaded Saturday 8/4/06 in Melbourne, Australia]